1.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world

2.
Language family
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others

3.
Indo-European languages
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The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD

4.
Italic languages
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The Italic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by Italic peoples. They include Latin and its descendants as well as a number of languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan. With over 800 million native speakers, the Italic languages constitute the second most widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, in the past, various definitions of Italic have prevailed. This article uses the classification presented by the Linguist List, Italic includes the Latin subgroup as well as the ancient Italic languages, venetic, as revealed by its inscriptions, shared some similarities with the Italic languages and is sometimes classified as Italic. However, since it shares similarities with other Western Indo-European branches. In the extreme view, Italic did not exist, but the different groups descended directly from Indo-European and this view stems in part from the difficulty in identifying a common Italic homeland in prehistory. Moreover, there are similarities between groups, although how these similarities are to be interpreted is one of the major debatable issues in the historical linguistics of Indo-European. The linguist Calvert Watkins went so far as to suggest, among ten major groups and these he considered dialectical divisions within Proto-Indo-European which go back to a period long before the speakers arrived in their historical areas of attestation. The main debate concerning the origin of the Italic languages is the same as that which preoccupied Greek studies for the last half of the 20th century, the Indo-Europeanists for Greek had hypothesized that Greek originated outside Greece and was brought in by invaders. The issue was settled in favour of the origin of Greek being that of a language which had developed from all of these elements and then also taken its recognisable form all within Greece. A proto-Italic homeland outside Italy is just as elusive as the home of the hypothetical Greek-speaking invaders, no early form of Italic is available to match Mycenaean Greek. The Italic languages are first attested in writing from Umbrian and Faliscan inscriptions dating to the 7th century BC, the alphabets used are based on the Old Italic alphabet, which is itself based on the Greek alphabet. The Italic alphabets themselves show minor influence from the Etruscan and somewhat more from the Ancient Greek alphabet, the intermediate phases between Italic and Indo-European are still in deficit, with no guarantee that they ever will be found. The question of whether Italic originated outside Italy or developed by assimilation of Indo-European and other elements within Italy, approximately on or within its current range there, remains. Silvestri says. Common Italic. is certainly not to be seen as a language that can largely be reconstructed. Bakkum defines Proto-Italic as a stage without an independent development of its own, but extending over late PIE. Meisers dates of 4000 BC to 1800 BC he describes as as good a guess as anyones, the Roman conquests eventually spread it throughout the peninsula and beyond in the Roman Empire. It is unknown whether the language spoken by the Sicels in Sicily was Italic or not, from Vulgar Latin the Romance languages emerged

5.
Romance languages
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Today, around 800 million people are native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe, Africa and the Americas, but also elsewhere. Additionally, the major Romance languages have many speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas. This is especially the case for French, which is in use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of speakers are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian. Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the modern Romance languages are given, for example, Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility. Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, western Germany and the Balkans north of the Jireček Line. Despite other influences, the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of all Romance languages consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin, however, some notable differences occur between todays Romance languages and their Roman ancestor. With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure. From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, the word romance with the modern sense of romance novel or love affair has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular, for example, the Portuguese word fresta is descended from Latin fenestra window, but now means skylight and slit. Cognates may exist but have become rare, such as finiestra in Spanish, the Spanish and Portuguese terms defenestrar meaning to throw through a window and fenestrado meaning replete with windows also have the same root, but are later borrowings from Latin. Galician has both fiestra and the frequently used ventá and xanela. As an alternative to lei, Italian has the pronoun ella, a cognate of the words for she. Sardinian balcone comes from Old Italian and is similar to other Romance languages such as French balcon, Portuguese balcão, Romanian balcon, Spanish balcón, Catalan balcó and Corsican balconi. Documentary evidence is limited about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of research. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples, other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and register differences normally found within any language. Both were mutually intelligible as one and the language, which was true until the second half of the 7th century. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by the Germanic and Slavic tribes, as well as by the Huns, over the course of the fourth to eighth centuries, Vulgar Latin, by this time highly dialectalized, broke up into discrete languages that were no longer mutually intelligible

6.
Western Romance
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Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini line. They include the Gallo-Romance and Iberian-Romance branches as well as northern Italian, there is also much higher morphological similarity between Spanish and Italian dialects than between Italian and French. Some classifications include Italo-Dalmatian, the clade is generally called Italo-Western Romance. Other classifications place Italo-Dalmatian with Eastern Romance, sardinian does not fit into either Western or Eastern Romance, and may have split off before either. Today the four most-widely spoken standardized Western Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, many of these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers, this is especially the case for French, in widespread use throughout West Africa as a lingua franca. Gallo-Romance includes, The Langues doïl, or Oïl languages and these include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, Lorrain and Norman. The Arpitan language, also known as Franco-Provençal and it shares features of both French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan. Sometimes included in the Oïl languages, Gallo-Romance can include, The Rhaeto-Romance languages. They include Romansh of Switzerland, Ladin of the Dolomites area, Rhaeto-Romance languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance, or as an independent branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitano-Romance languages of Southern France and East Iberia, includes Occitan and Catalan, Occitano-Romance languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Iberian-Romance, or as an independent branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitan language, or langue doc, has such as Provençal dialect. The Catalan language has standard forms of Catalan and Valencian, can be classified as East Iberian. They include Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Gallo-Italic of Sicily, Gallo-Italic languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance or as Northern Italian dialects. The Oïl languages, Arpitan and Rhaeto-Romance languages are sometimes called Gallo-Rhaetian, Iberian Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula include, The West Iberian languages, The Castilian languages, includes Spanish and Judaeo-Spanish. The Galician-Portuguese languages, includes Portuguese, Galician, Fala and Uruguayan Portuñol, the Astur-Leonese languages, they are, from east to west, Cantabrian, central-eastern Asturian and Leonese proper. Going from north to south, they are Leonese proper, Mirandese, Extremaduran, the Pyrenean–Mozarabic languages, includes Aragonese, and the extinct Mozarabic. Can be classified as West Iberian, the East Iberian language, or Catalan language, usually classified as part of Occitano-Romance, see Gallo-Romance above

7.
Gallo-Romance languages
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The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes sensu stricto the Oïl languages and the Franco-Provençal language. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Rhaeto-Romance, Occitano-Romance, the Gallo-Romance group includes, The Langues doïl, or Oïl languages. These include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, Lorrain and Normand, Poitevin and these are the most phonologically innovative Romance varieties. The Arpitan language, also known as Franco-Provençal, of southeastern France, western Switzerland and it shares features of both French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan. Other language families which are included in the Gallo-Romance, The Rhaeto-Romance languages, including Romansh of Switzerland, Ladin of the Dolomites area. Rhaeto-Romance can be classified as Gallo-Romance, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages, Rhaeto-Romance is a diverse group, with the Italian varieties influenced by Venetan and Italian and Romansh by Franco-Provençal. The Occitano-Romance languages of Southern France and neighbouring areas, includes Occitan and Catalan, Occitano-Romance can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Iberian Romance, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitan language, or langue doc, has such as Provençal. The Catalan language has standard forms of Catalan and Valencian, in general however, modern Catalan, especially grammatically, remains closer to modern Occitan than to either Spanish or Portuguese. They include Piedmontese, Ligurian, Western and Eastern Lombard, Emilian, Romagnol, Gallo-Italic of Sicily, Gallo-Italic can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Italo-Dalmatian, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages. Ligurian retains the final -o, being the exception in Gallo-Romance, how far the Gallo-Romance languages spread varies a great deal depending on which languages are included in the group. Today, a single Gallo-Romance language dominates much of this region and has also spread overseas. At its broadest, the area also encompasses southern France, Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic islands in eastern Spain, the Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered the most innovative among the Romance languages. Characteristic Gallo-Romance features generally developed earliest and appear in their most extreme manifestation in the langue doïl, gradually spreading out from there along riverways, Gallo-Romance languages are usually characterised by the loss of all unstressed final vowels other than /-a/. However, when the loss of a final vowel would result in an impossible final cluster, generally, the same changes also occurred in final syllables closed by a consonant. Elsewhere, final vowel loss occurred later or unprotected /t/ was lost earlier, for example, French sain, saint, sein, ceint, seing meaning healthy, holy, breast, girds, signature are all pronounced /sɛ̃/. In other ways, however, the Gallo-Romance languages are conservative, in the opposite of the normal pattern, the languages closest to the oïl epicentre preserve the case system the best, and languages at the periphery lost it early. The Occitan group is known for an innovatory /ɡ/ ending on many subjunctive and preterite verbs and a development of

8.
Gallo-Italian languages
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The Gallo-Italian or Gallo-Italic languages constitute the majority of the languages of northern Italy. They are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian-Romagnol and Ligurian, although there is doubt about the position of the latter due to a number of special characteristics. The Venetian language is considered one of the Italo-Dalmatian languages, however. The Gallo-Italian languages have both of the Gallo-Romance languages to the northwest and the Italo-Dalmatian languages to the south. Examples of the former are the loss of all vowels other than -a, the occurrence of lenition, the development of original /kt/ to /jt/. As a result, there is debate over the proper grouping of the Gallo-Italian languages. They are sometimes grouped with Gallo-Romance, but other linguists group them in Italo-Dalmatian, traditionally spoken in Northern Italy, southern Switzerland, San Marino and Monaco, most Gallo-Italian languages have given way in everyday use to Standard Italian. The vast majority of current speakers are bilingual with Italian and these languages are still spoken by the Italian diaspora in countries with Italian immigrant communities. Ligurian is formalised in Monaco as the Monégasque dialect. g, Lombard òm man, füm smoke, nef snow, fil wire, röda wheel. They remain, however, in Ligurian, with passage of -o to -u, except after n, e. g. ramu, rami, lüme, lümi branch, branches, light, lights, but can, chen /kaŋ, keŋ/ dog, dogs. U /u/ tends to change to ü /y/, as in French and Occitan, as in Lombard füm and Ligurian lüme, in some parts, e. g. southern Piedmont, this has further developed into /i/, e. g. fis, lim. In some mountainous parts of Piedmont, however, this change is blocked before final /a/, leading to masculine crü, so-called metaphony is very common, affecting original open stressed è /ɛ/ and ò /ɔ/ when followed by /i/ or sometimes /o/. This leads at first to diphthongs ie and uo, but in many dialects these progress further, unlike standard Italian diphthongization, this typically operates both in open and closed syllables, hence in Lombardy quest vs. quist. Stressed closed é /e/ and sometimes ó /o/, when occurring in an open syllable often diphthongize to /ei/ and /ou/, as in Old French, e. g. Piedmont beive, teila, meis. In Piedmont, /ei/ develops further into either /ɛ/ or /i/, e. g. tèla /tɛla/ < *teila, sira, stressed /a/ in an open syllable often fronts to ä /æ/ or è /ɛ/. Lenition affects single consonants between vowels, voiced /d/ and /g/ drop, voiced /b/ becomes /v/ or drops, unvoiced /t/ and /k/ become voiced /d/ and /g/, or drop, unvoiced /p/ becomes /b/, /v/, or drops. /s/ between vowels voices to /z/, /l/ between vowels sometimes becomes /r/, and this /r/ sometimes drops. Double consonants are reduced to single consonants, but not otherwise lenited and these changes occur before a final vowel drops

9.
Lombard language
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Lombard is a member of the Cisalpine or Gallo-Italic group within the Romance languages. It is spoken natively in Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland, the two main varieties have significant differences and are not always mutually intelligible. Lombard is considered a minority language, structurally separated from Italian, by the Ethnologue reference catalogue and that fact is being obscured, to some extent, both by the use of Italian orthography to write the languages and by influence from Italian. Historically, the vast majority of Lombards spoke only Lombard, Lombard is from the Gallo-Italian subdivision of the Italo-Romance group that shares common features with Gallo-Romance languages and other Western Romance languages. The varieties of the Italian provinces of Milan, Varese, Como, Lecco, Lodi, Monza, Pavia and Mantua belong to the Western subgroup, and the ones of Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona are Eastern. All the varieties spoken in the Swiss areas are Western, also, dialects from the Piedmontese provinces of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Novara, the Valsesia valley, and the city of Tortona are closer to Western Lombard than to Piedmontese. The koiné is similar to Milanese and the varieties of the provinces on the Italian side of the border. There is extant literature in other varieties of Lombard, for example La masséra da bé, standard Italian is widely used in Lombard-speaking areas. However, the status of Lombard is quite different between the Swiss and Italian areas, which justifies the view that the Swiss areas have now become the stronghold of Lombard. In the Swiss areas, the local Lombard varieties are generally better preserved, no negative feelings are associated with the use of Lombard in everyday life, even with complete strangers. Some radio and television programmes, particularly comedies, are occasionally broadcast by the Swiss Italian-speaking broadcasting company in Lombard, moreover, it is common for people from the street to answer in Lombard in spontaneous interviews. Even some television ads in Lombard have been reported, the major research institution working on Lombard dialects is located in Bellinzona, Switzerland, there is no comparable institution in Italy. In December 2004, the CDE released a dictionary in five volumes, today, in most urban areas of Italian Lombardy, people under 40 years old speak almost exclusively Italian in their daily lives because of schooling and television broadcasts in Italian. However, in Periferic Lombardy, Lombard is still vital, now, the political party most supportive of Lombard is the Northern League. Thus, speaking a dialect of some minority languages might be controversial in Italy. The popularity of artists singing their lyrics in some Lombard dialect is also a relatively new. New York 2003, Facts On File. p.40, itinerario antologico-critico dalle origini ai nostri giorni - Hoepli,2003. A comprehensive description of a set of writing rules for all the Lombard varieties of Switzerland and Italy, with IPA transcriptions

10.
Province of Lecco
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The Province of Lecco is a province in the Lombardy region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Lecco, on 1 January 2001 the province had a population of 311,452 on a surface of 816 square kilometres divided in 90 comunes. The Province of Lecco was established by the President of the Republic in Decree No.250 of 6 March 1992, elections for the appointment of the 1st President of the Province of Lecco were held on April 23,1995 and May 7,1995. The proclamation of the 1st President, Mario Anghileri, occurred on May 9,1995, the Province of Lecco is situated in northern central Italy. The province of Lecco has an area of only 814.58 square kilometres, with some 600 square kilometres located across the Adda River, 70% of the province is mountainous and the other 30% is hilly. The highest point is Mount Legnone in the north of the province,2,609 metres high, in the west, is Monte Cornizzolo lake at 1,240 metres and Monte Rai at 1,259 metres. In the east of the province is Monte Serrada and the Resegone di Lecco,1,875 metres with its characteristic shape reminiscent of the teeth of a saw, in the center-south is Monte Barro at 922 metres, in the Monte Barro Regional Park. The province contains numerous lakes, with Lake Como and Lake Annone in the comunes of Garlate and Olginate, to the west, the comunes of Rogeno, Bosisio Parini and Cesana Brianza overlook Lake Pusiano. There is also an abundance of rivers, including the main Adda river, other smaller rivers are the Molgora, the Bévéra, a tributary of the Lambro, the Pioverna flowing in Valsassina, and Varro flowing in Val Varrone

11.
Como
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Como is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Como. With 215,320 overnight guests, in 2013 Como was the fourth most visited city in Lombardy after Milan, Bergamo, the hills surrounding the current location of Como have been inhabited, since at least the Bronze Age, by a Celtic tribe known as the Orobii. Remains of settlements are still present on the wood covered hills to the South West of town, around the 1st century BC, the territory became subject to the Romans. The newly founded town was named Novum Comum and had the status of municipium, in 774, the town surrendered to invading Franks led by Charlemagne, and became a center of commercial exchange. In 1127, Como lost a war with the nearby town of Milan. A few decades later, with the help of Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick promoted the construction of several defensive towers around the city limits, of which only one, the Baradello, remains. Subsequently, the history of Como followed that of the Ducato di Milano, through the French invasion and the Spanish domination, until 1714, Napoleon descended into Lombardy in 1796 and ruled it until 1815, when the Austrian rule was resumed after the Congress of Vienna. Finally in 1859, with the arrival of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the town was freed from the Austrians, as a curiosity, the Rockefeller fountain that today stands in the Bronx Zoo in New York City was once in the main square by the lakeside. It was bought by William Rockefeller in 1902 for 3,500 lire, nearby major cities are Varese, Lecco and Lugano. Wind is quite rare, only sudden bursts of foehn or thunderstorms manage to sweep the air clean, pollution levels rise significantly in winter when cold air clings to the soil. Rain is more frequent during spring, summer is subject to thunderstorms and, occasionally, Como Cathedral, construction began in 1396 on the site of the previous Romanesque church of Santa Maria Maggiore. The façade was built in 1457, with the rose window. The construction was finished in 1740, the interior is on the Latin cross plan, with Gothic nave and two aisles divided by piers, while the transept wing and the relative apses are from the Renaissance age. It includes a carved 16th century choir and tapestries on cartoons by Giuseppe Arcimboldi, the dome is a rococo structure by Filippo Juvarra. Other artworks include 16th–17th century tapestries and 16th century paintings by Bernardino Luini, San Fedele, a Romanesque church erected around 1120 over a pre-existing central plan edifice. The original bell tower was rebuilt in modern times, the main feature is the famous Door of St. Fedele, carved with medieval decorations. SantAgostino, built by the Cistercians in the early 14th century, the interior and adjoining cloister have 15th–17th century frescoes, but most of the decoration is Baroque

12.
Lecco
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Lecco is a city of 48,131 inhabitants in Lombardy, northern Italy,50 kilometres north of Milan, the capital of the province of Lecco. It lies at the end of the branch of Lake Como. The Bergamo Alps rise to the north and east, cut through by the Valsassina of which Lecco marks the southern end, the lake narrows to form the river Adda, so bridges were built to improve road communications with Como and Milan. There are four crossing the river Adda in Lecco, the Azzone Visconti Bridge, the Kennedy Bridge and the Alessandro Manzoni Bridge. Its economy used to be based on industry, but now it is mainly tertiary, Lecco was also Alpine Town of the Year 2013. Archaeological finds demonstrate the presence of Celtic settlement in the area before the arrival of the Romans, the latter built a castrum here and made it an important road hub. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Lombards captured the town in the 6th century, they were followed by the Franks, emperor Otto I spent a long time in Lecco, crushing the 964 AD revolt against the Holy Roman Empire led by Leccos Count Attone. Later it became a possession of the Milanese monastery of St. Ambrose, conrad II also stayed in Lecco, in the attempt to free it from the church, but as the result of the ensuing wars the city was subjected by Milan. It subsequently followed the history of the Duchy of Milan and of Lombardy, in the early 16th century it was briefly ruled by the condottiere Gian Giacomo Medici. The main sports facility of the city is the Rigamonti-Ceppi Stadium and it was built in 1922 in honor of the football player Mario Rigamonti and the ex president of the team Mario Ceppi. It can contain almost 5000 people, Lecco is the finish of the Giro di Lombardia cycling classic which includes the famous Madonna del Ghisallo hill. Alessandro Manzoni, poet and novelist, author of I promessi sposi, antonio Ghislanzoni, journalist, poet, and novelist, he wrote many librettos for Verdi, including La forza del destino and Aida. Roberto Castelli, Senator, former Minister of Justice during the government of Silvio Berlusconi 2001–2006, roberto Formigoni, a Catholic conservative politician, President of Lombardy since 1995. Antonio Rossi, a canoeist and five-time Olympic medalist in kayak flatwater canoeing, sandro Salsano, a businessman and philanthropist, chairman and president of Salsano Group. Alessandro Manzoni set the events in the first half of The Betrothed in Lecco and we voyaged by steamer down the Lago di Lecco, through wild mountain scenery, and by hamlets and villas, and disembarked at the town of Lecco. They said it was two hours, by carriage to the ancient city of Bergamo, and that we would arrive there in season for the railway train. We got an open barouche and a wild, boisterous driver and we had a fast team and a perfectly smooth road. There were towering cliffs on our left, and the pretty Lago di Lecco on our right, in total, ethnic groups in Lecco represent 97 countries

13.
Carlo Porta
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Carlo Porta was an Italian poet, the most famous writer in Milanese. Porta was born in Milan to Giuseppe Porta and Violante Gottieri and he studied in Monza until 1792 and then in the Seminario of Milan. In 1796, the Napoleonic Wars pushed Porta to find a job in Venice, from 1804 until his death, Porta worked as government employee, although he would have been pleased to keep on studying. In 1806, he married to Vincenza Prevosti and he died in Milan in January 1821 from an attack of gout and was buried in the Church of San Gregorio. His tomb was subsequently lost, but his tombstone Is still conserved in the vault of San Gregorio church, Porta began to write poems in 1790, although few of them were published before 1810. In 1804-1805 he worked at a Milanese translation of the Divine Comedy, in these years the progressive group that formed round him and called themselves the Cameretta Portiana included Giuseppe Bossi, who painted a group portrait of four Amici della Cameretta Portiana. In 1810, Brindisi de Meneghin allOstaria was published and this was one of many works by Porta featuring Meneghino. His best season two years later, with Desgrazzi de Giovannin Bongee. His works can be divided into three categories, works against superstition and religious hypocrisy, descriptions of vivid Milanese popular characters, the first one includes Fraa Zenever, On Miracol, Fraa Diodatt, La mia povera nonna la ghaveva. His political satires were mainly sonnets, such as Paracar che scappee de Lombardia, E daj con sto chez-nous, ma sanguanon, Marcanagg i politegh secca ball, Quand vedessev on pubblegh funzionari. Porta satirized the upcoming new Milanese aristocracy, too, in La nomina del cappellan, making a parody of the episode of the vergine cuccia in Il Giorno, by Giuseppe Parini. In 1816 Porta joined the Romantic literarian movement, obviously in his own way, in the very last strophe, he called himself a dumb, in Emilio Checchi and Natalino Sapegno

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Giuseppe Parini
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Giuseppe Parini was an Italian Enlightenment satirist and poet of the neoclassic period. Parini was born in Bosisio in Brianza, Lombardy, in 1741 his grandaunt left him a monthly payment, at the condition that he would enter priesthood. His poem, Il Giorno, consisting of instructions to a young nobleman as to the best method of spending his mornings. It at once established Parinis popularity and influence, and two later a continuation of the same theme was published under the title of Il Mezzogiorno. Among other poems his rather artificial Odi, composed between 1757 and 1795, have appeared in various editions and he was associated with the Accademia della Crusca. Parinis work was accepted by younger poets mainly as a lesson in morality and freedom of thought. Ugo Foscolo, who met Parini in Milan, portrayed him as a serious, dignified person in Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis and accused the rich and corrupt town which had forgotten him and he died in August 1799 in Milan. A statue of the poet occupies a place of honor in Milans busy Piazzale Cordusio and his family still lives on, with Simon Cereda-Parini being the youngest known relative to continue the name to this day. The Day Morning, Midday, Evening, Night, a Poem

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Giuseppe Bossi
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Giuseppe Bossi was an Italian painter, arts administrator and writer on art. He ranks among the foremost figures of Neoclassical culture in Lombardy, along with Ugo Foscolo, Giuseppe Parini and he was born in the town of Busto Arsizio, near Milan. He was educated at the college of Monza, and his fondness for drawing was fostered by the director of the college. He met Jacques-Louis David in Lyon in 1802, though his own style employed a less rigorously classicizing technique and he was rewarded with the Order of the Iron Crown. The drawing was made from the remains of the original with the aid of copies, the mosaic,9.18 m in length, was executed by the Roman mosaicist Giacomo Raffaelli, and was placed in the Minoritenkirche, Vienna. Bossi made another copy in oil, which was placed in the Pinacoteca Brera, the Brera Academy owed to him its fine collection of casts of great works of sculpture acquired at Paris, Rome and Florence. For himself, Bossi collected books, drawings, prints, paintings, coins, sculptures and he left unfinished a large cartoon in black chalk of the Dead Christ in the bosom of Mary, with John and the Magdalene. Bossis other publications were Delle Opinioni di Leonardo intorno alla simmetria de corpi umani and his diary, 1807–1815, is a useful guide to the official artistic life of Napoleonic Milan. Bossi died at his home in via S. Maria Valle, a monument by Canova was erected to his memory in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and a bust was placed in the Brera. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Bossi. Getty Museum, Giuseppe Bossi, a sheet of studies Commemorative plaque on Bossis Milan residence, gives birth date 11. viii.1777, le memorie di Giuseppe Bossi, Diario di un artista nella Milano napoleonica 1807-1815

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Alessandro Manzoni
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Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni was an Italian poet and novelist. He is famous for the novel The Betrothed, generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature, the novel is also a symbol of the Italian Risorgimento, both for its patriotic message and because it was a fundamental milestone in the development of the modern, unified Italian language. Manzoni was born in Milan, Italy, on 7 March 1785, pietro, his father, aged about fifty, belonged to an old family of Lecco, originally feudal lords of Barzio, in the Valsassina. The poets maternal grandfather, Cesare Beccaria, was an author and philosopher. The young Alessandro spent his first two years of life in cascina Costa in Galbiate and he was wet-nursed by Caterina Panzeri, in 1792 his parents broke their marriage and his mother began a relationship with the highbrow Carlo Imbonati, moving to England and later to Paris. For this reason, their son was brought up in religious institutes. Manzoni was a developer, and at the various colleges he attended he was considered a dunce. At fifteen, however, he developed a passion for poetry, there too he imbibed the anti-Catholic creed of Voltairianism. In 1808, Manzoni married Henriette Blondel, daughter of a Genevese banker and she came from a Calvinist family, but in 1810 she became a Roman Catholic. Her conversion profoundly influenced her husband and that same year he experienced a religious crisis which led him from Jansenism to an austere form of Catholicism. Manzonis marriage proved a most happy one, and he led for many years a retired domestic life, in 1818 he had to sell his paternal inheritance, as his money had been lost to a dishonest agent. His characteristic generosity was shown at this time in his dealings with his peasants and he not only cancelled on the spot the record of all sums owed to him, but bade them keep for themselves the whole of the coming maize harvest. In 1819, Manzoni published his first tragedy, Il Conte di Carmagnola and it was severely criticized in a Quarterly Review article to which Goethe replied in its defence, one genius, as Count de Gubernatis remarks, having divined the other. The death of Napoleon in 1821 inspired Manzonis powerful stanzas Il Cinque maggio, round the episode of the Innominato, historically identified with Bernardino Visconti, the first manuscript of the novel The Betrothed began to grow into shape, and was completed in September 1823. The work was published, after being deeply reshaped by the author and revised by friends in 1825–1827, at the rate of a volume a year and it is generally agreed to be his greatest work, and the paradigm of modern Italian language. In 1822, Manzoni published his tragedy, Adelchi, turning on the overthrow by Charlemagne of the Lombard domination in Italy. With these works Manzonis literary career was practically closed and he also wrote a small treatise on the Italian language. The death of Manzonis wife in 1833 was preceded and followed by those of several of his children, and of his mother

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Tommaso Grossi
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Tommaso Grossi was an Italian poet and novelist. In 1816, he published two poems, written likewise in Milanese—La Pioggia doro and La Fuggitiva. These compositions secured him the friendship of Porta and Manzoni, and he next wrote an epic poem, entitled The Lombards in the First Crusade, a work of which Manzoni makes honorable mention in I Promessi Sposi. The example of Manzoni induced Grossi to write a novel entitled Marco Visconti. A little later Grossi published a tale in verse, Ulrico e Lida, in 1834, he helped organise the Salotto Maffei, the liberal and patriotic literary salon in Milan hosted by Clara Maffei, there Verdi made his acquaintance. After his marriage in 1838 he continued to employ himself as a notary in Milan till his death, notes Sources Ignazio Cantù, Vita de opere di Tommaso Grossi. ISBN 88-7695-113-X Aurelio Sargenti, Carteggio 1816 -1853, milano, Centro Nazionale Studi Manzoniani,2005. ISBN 88-87924-87-2 Attribution This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Grossi. This work in turn cites, a life by Ignazio Cantù

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Delio Tessa
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Delio Tessa was an Italian poet from Milan. He is the most renowned writer in Milanese dialect after Carlo Porta, the originality of his poetry stands mostly in his expressionism and his satirical way to depict Death. His masterpiece is Lè el dì di Mort, alegher, stylistically, he uses massively enjambements and parentheticals, he mixes Milanese dialect with Italian and foreign languages such as French and English, making them rhyme, too. An antifascist, he remained aloof from official culture, devoting himself to local sphere, except the collection of poems Lè el dì di mort, alegher. All his works have been published posthumously, the topics of his poetics are the drama of the World War I and of the daily life of neglects, revised in personal way and caring very much about the sonority of the lines. Often the topic of the women is present, with a pessimism. The restlessness is reflected in the tension of the language, used like strongly fragmented popular language, Tessa died in 1939 of abscess, and was buried, according to his will, in a common field of Musocco. However, in 1950 Milan City Council transferred his body to the citys Monumental Cemetery, where other eminent Milanese people lie